My bones will bleach (my flesh will flee)
by ibuzoo
Summary: <html><head></head>The soft flesh of her delicate lips is pinkish and rosy, he traces the spot where her teeth lacerated the skin, draws her lips on the photo over and over again as if he wants to memorize the shape with his fingertips. Later, he takes a permanent marker and writes down the necessary information - Hermione, January 2014 - pins the photo on the wall and leaves.</html>


**My bones will bleach (my flesh will flee)**

**Prompt:** Cold-Blooded

**Rating:** M

**Warnings:** Modern AU , Photographer AU, Serialkiller AU, Mention of Death and Blood, Psychological Anguish

**Word count:** 1194

**A/N: **I should explain that Tom is a photographer in this story and a serial killer too - it's creepy and gruesome at once and the product of a lot Criminal Minds episodes from the last weeks.

* * *

><p><strong>o.<strong>

With steady hands Tom hangs the next photo on a thin nylon cord that's stretched across his red lit altar. It takes some seconds before a scene reveals itself on the smooth surface of the photo paper and he observes how a sea of flowers rises in the background and features the girl on top like a bed, her pale skin a shimmering contrast against dark stems and grass.

What a cruel art, he thinks and takes a permanent marker to leave a single name and date on the back of his artwork, scrawls with an elegant yet spiky script - Myrtle, October 2013 - thinks further, to capture moments that should have been allowed to transpire in the past, drag them in our future even if they should have existed in our memories only.

* * *

><p><strong>i.<strong>

He wakes up in the park with a terrible headache that hammers through his head, lushly green fields with a lake in the middle and the whir of dragonflies all around him while blood drips off his fingers.

_(like poetry, like art, like honey) _

There's a camera right beside him and sandy marks that reach from his hidden spot between reeds and mud down to the lake.

Reaching down to wash his dirt and blood-covered hands, he brushes the rusty-red liquid on his fingers but a laugh makes him pause, like a dream half-forgotten. His eyes gaze around and sure enough he spots a girl, not much younger than himself, perhaps in her early twenties and he didn't know he held his breath until the sudden need to breathe kicked in and his lungs started to burn.

He's utterly mesmerised so he takes his camera and shoots.

* * *

><p><strong>ii.<strong>

The table is covered in 86 different photo prints - some of them are blurry, some of them just partial shots but in the end a special one lies on top of them all, neatly dried. He takes it carefully and pins it on a nearby wall - which had previously been covered in photographs of his 34 victims, sorted by date and now carefully packed away in labeled boxes - that is now a white empty spot in the corner of his office.

It's a full body picture and she laughs wide, eyes glistening with little fragments of the November sun while something secret lies behind them, something worthy of discovery.

He can't look away, not even hours later.

* * *

><p><strong>iii.<strong>

In sleep she looks peaceful and Tom brushes a strand of her wild brown hair behind her ear to reveal the beautiful face that lies beneath. Her lips are partially open with a thin sheet of saliva that glistens in the moonlight and Tom is hypnotised by the way her eyelashes flutter softly against her cheek while her soft breasts rise with each breath below the satin of her nightshirt. Her room literally reeks of honey and cinnamon, a saccharine scent that tickles in the inside of his nostrils and he needs to put himself together and control his self-restraint to not bury his nose between the thick of her wild curls - or even worse, ravish her sugary-sweet mouth.

In the end he takes his camera and shoots.

* * *

><p><strong>iv.<strong>

He wakes up in blood and dirt, this time it's different though because the boy lies still beside him, still covered in dark red with slashes all over him. He packs him up and disposes of him without a picture at all.

_(the box under his bed still counts 34 photos)_

_(they're not his muses anymore)_

* * *

><p><strong>v.<strong>

His boots leave slurping sounds on the frozen ground and white crumbs of snow catch in the hollow between them and his dark denim jeans, a cold sensation makes him clutch his coat tighter around his slim waist. He watches her from the other side of the coffee shop, hidden between two alleys. His 300mm lens shoots perfectly sharp photos even through the thickness of the shop window glass.

He can see the way her shoulders are tense and how she bites at her bottom lip, drags her teeth over the thin layer of skin until they're red swollen and bruised - a habit, as he learned the last couple weeks, that she practices as soon as a question needs a difficult explanation - and he loves to watch her like this, all focused on her work.

He zooms in on her lips and shoots.

* * *

><p><strong>vi.<strong>

The soft flesh of her delicate lips is pinkish and rosy, with little grazes where red crusts of blood already linger. He traces the spot where her teeth lacerated the skin, draws her lips on the photo over and over again as if he wants to memorise the shape with his fingertips. Later, he takes a permanent marker and writes down the necessary information - Hermione, January 2014 - pins the photo on the wall and leaves.

_(there are 298 of them now, all of them of her)_

* * *

><p><strong>vii.<strong>

They're very much alike, quite similar in manner and bearing, in correspondence and gesture, which bounces and echoes off other people to reverberate moments later in intelligence and serenity. Her eyes are dark chocolate brown and he loves the way the iris blows wide each time she reads something special, something that kicks in and gives her a certain kind of self-affirmation and he needs to shoot the photos with his mobile, no cameras allowed in the Bodleian.

The pictures are blurry on his phone - of course not comparable to his professional camera system - but he doesn't care, watches the way her expression rests serene, almost holy and he prints them out and pins them on the wall.

* * *

><p><strong>viii.<strong>

Sometimes the photos talk to him in poetry.

Each one of them tells a story, a tragedy and Tom wants to know them all, wants to crawl under Hermione's skin and taste the bitter scent of sadness and spilled blood. He traces her face in the first photo he ever shot of her, the one in the park with a laughing face and bright brown eyes and he wishes she'd smile for him too.

_(soon, whispers his mind, soon)_

He closes his eyes and sleeps.

* * *

><p><strong>ix.<strong>

He blinks and wakes up to dirt and blood once more, mud that covers his hands while sobs and screams reach his ears. His eyes spot Hermione kneeling in the dirt in front of him and her hands desperately press on deep cuts of someone's chest. It looks like she tries to stuff the blood that's flooding out back in again but the boy is dead, Tom knows, and her face is wet from shed tears that spilled from red swollen eyes and his world just stops because he wanted her to laugh, to smile but this, this is utter perfection, the way her cheeks glisten in the night, the way the blood drips thick and succulent from her fingers-

He takes his camera and shoots.

* * *

><p><strong>x.<strong>

_(there are 457 photos of her now, all of them wallpapering his office and he watches mesmerised, amazed, traces her face with the tips of her fingers while his mind whispers her name over and over again)_


End file.
